Sunday, January 1, 2017

Moana

I will admit I first had some hesitation
to see Moana, if only because of the bits that the trailers decided to focus on,
which gave me the impression it would be extremely silly. However, after
attending a seminar about the movie featuring animation legend Eric Goldberg,
who had a hand in the movie’s production, my opinion changed and I became very
interested in seeing it. Though I wasn’t able to actually see it until the very
end of 2016 due to the high number of movies I had seen that year, I still
didn’t expect a perfect movie going in, however I came out having seen what
turned out to be a very well-executed musical about Pacific Island mythology.

From a young age, Moana Waialiki (Louise
Bush) has been attracted to the sea, wishing to explore the ocean beyond the
island shores of Motunui in spite of constant warnings from her father, Chief
Tui (Temuera Morrison). Years later, Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) makes the discovery
that her tribe once explored the ocean, however that changed once the heart of
island goddess Te Fiti was stolen by the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), causing
darkness to fall upon the ocean and slowly destroy all life. After having
received the heart of Te Fiti, a magical stone, from her grandmother Tala
(Rahcel House), Moana makes it her mission to find Maui so he can return the
heart to its rightful place and restore balance to the world.

The story itself is told at a good pace
and there’s some pretty clever humor throughout, although it does only once
briefly resort to a bladder joke for a quick laugh. A lot of the humor is
otherwise found involving the actions of Heihei, an idiot rooster that ends up
as a stowaway on Moana’s journey. While I’m not an expert on Pacific Island
culture, I can say that, from whatever I do know, the story is an interesting
take on Pacific Island mythos while still having its own identity as a
well-written plot.

The animation of Moana is really
amazing, particularly in the animation of hair and water (especially the
latter). During a section of the story involving a fight against a giant
coconut crab, there is a really interesting display of shining and
glow-in-the-dark effects, fitting in with the mood set by that segment’s song
(more on that later). Even more impressive is the animation for Mini Maui, a
smaller figure within Maui’s body tattoos that acts as Maui’s conscience,
considering that all of its actions are actually traditional animation. Having
gone in with that knowledge, I was amazed by how Mini Maui was able to interact
with not only Maui’s other tattoos in what presumably a combination of a
traditional and CG space, but also Maui himself, who is animated in CG, and so
it made me appreciate the effort that must have gone into making these seamless
interactions possible.

Being a musical, you’d expect the music
to be good, and in this case that is correct. While there seemed to only be a
handful of songs, each of them is well-done and help explain things about the
characters without interfering with the plot; a particular favorite of mine is “You’re
Welcome,” a song about Maui that explains his view on the world and reveals
Dwayne Johnson’s singing talents (plus, in context, it shows another impressive
blend of traditional and CG animation). While also pretty okay, “Shiny,” sung
by the coconut crab, Tamatoa (Jemaine Clement), seems to drag a little (it
overall lasts about 3+ minutes), though it still doesn’t do any major harm to
the narrative flow. The voice acting itself is also well-casted, especially
since most of the voice actors they did cast could also sing in scenes that
required it (the exception being Chief Tui, as Christopher Jackson provides his
singing voice). One interesting behind-the-scenes tidbit is that actual Pacific
Islanders were among at least a majority of the voice cast for authenticity (I
only found out through hearing this that Dwayne Johnson is himself a Pacific
Islander, specifically Samoan).

Preceding the main feature is a new,
Inside Out-esque short titled Inner Workings, about the goings-on of a man’s
body as he prepares for a normal working day while simultaneously wishing to
indulge in outside pleasures along the way. The short itself is actually pretty
good animation-wise, as it tells the entire story without any dialogue, and it manages
to be pretty funny throughout. My only issue is with the presence of a couple
bladder jokes, including one similar to the one present in Moana, though this
didn’t take much away from my overall opinion.

Overall, Moana is a very enjoyable
Disney movie. It’s truly amazing to see what can be done with CG in terms of
water physics, plus it’s nice to see the integration of traditional animation in
an interesting way. The songs in the movie are also well-written and largely
memorable, making for one of Disney’s better musical features and one of their
better movies in recent years. There is also an after-credits scene in this
one, so be sure to stay until the end.